AS SEEN ON TV: HERCULE POIROT

HERCULE POIROT

AS SEEN IN:

"Thirteen At Dinner"

"Dead Man's Folly"

"Murder In Three Acts"

AS PLAYED BY:

Sir Peter Ustinov

TV DIMENSION:

"The Borderlands"

STATUS:

Recastaway

CREATED BY:

Dame Agatha Crhistie

From Wikipedia:

Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.

Poirot has been portrayed on radio, on screen, for films and television, by various actors, including John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina and David Suchet.

From the source material:

"He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police."

- "The Mysterious Affair At Styles"

"By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young Belgian lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man (Hercule Poirot) muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache."

- "Murder On The Orient Express"

BCnU!

Fear not, Team Toobworld!  At some point this year, David Suchet's portrayal of Poirot will get its due.  Even though he was not the first to play Poirot on TV (Ustinov beat him to that by four years, plus there was Martin Gabel back in the 1950s), nor would he be the last, Suchet's version is the definitive one for Earth Prime-Time.

I just thought Ustinov's portrayal had some interesting televisiological aspects to it that I'll be exploring in the next post......